William I. sharply raised the amounts of all these farms for his own benefit, and his successors endeavoured, whenever possible, to increase them still further. Now it might seem at first sight that these additional burdens concerned exclusively the Crown and the sheriff, but such was by no means the case. The sheriff took care to pass on the burden primarily falling upon him to the shoulders of those who were subject to his authority. When the king exacted more from the sheriff, the latter in turn increased the pressure on the inhabitants of his county or group of counties. His rule tended always to be oppressive, but his unjust fines and exactions would be doubled at times when the amount of the firma had recently been raised.
Under the vigilant rule of Henry II. some measure of relief was obtained by the shires from the misdeeds of their local tyrants, since that far-seeing king knew that his own best interests called for a curtailment of the pretensions of the sheriffs. He punished their excesses, and frequently deprived them of office. Under John the sheriffs had a comparatively free hand to oppress their victims, for he entered into a tacit alliance with them, in order that the two tyrants (the heads of the central and the local government respectively) might together fleece the men of the county more effectually. In addition to the fixed annual rents in name of firma which had again become stereotyped, John extorted an additional lump payment called either an incrementum or by various other names, and allowed the sheriffs to inflict new severities in order to recoup themselves for their additional outlay.[[662]]
Magna Carta made no attempt to abolish the practice of farming out the shires, but forbade alike the increase of the farm and the exaction of an incrementum.
If this reform benefited the men of the counties in their dealings with the sheriffs, it also gave the sheriffs an unfair advantage over the exchequer. The total value of the various assets included in the firma comitatus had greatly increased in the past, and would probably continue to increase in the future. Therefore, it was absurd to bind the Crown by a hard-and-fast rule which would practically make a present of this future “unearned increment” to the sheriff. It belonged of right to the Crown; and the exchequer had increasing need of supplies to meet the increasing duties of the central government. To stereotype the firma to be paid in return for a constantly increasing revenue was unfair to the Crown.[[663]] It is thus easy to understand why this chapter was entirely omitted in 1216 and in subsequent reissues. The Articuli super cartas, on the other hand, while conceding to the counties the right of electing their own sheriffs, reaffirmed the principle of John’s Charter, declaring that neither the bailiwicks and hundreds of the king, nor those of great lords ought to be put to farm at too high rates. The evil, however, continued under a new form; sheriffs, while only paying a moderate farm themselves, sublet parts of their province at much higher rates, thus appropriating the increment denied to the exchequer, while the bailiffs who had paid the increase could not “levy the said ferm without doing extortion and duress to the people.”[[664]] Three successive acts prohibited this practice, declaring that hundreds and wapentakes must either be kept in the sheriff’s own hands, or sublet, if at all, at the old fixed farms only.[[665]]
One exception to the scope of its own provisions was deliberately made by Magna Carta—an exception of an important and notable nature; the demesne manors of the Crown were deliberately left exposed to arbitrary increases of their annual rents. The towns in this respect were practically in the same position as the demesne manors. It is true that many of them had received separate charters fixing the amounts annually payable under the name of farm (firma burgi in their case), and that all such charters received a general confirmation in chapter 13 of the Great Charter, but the Crown could probably evade these promises by applying the name of “increment” to any additional payments desired, or, if that were objected to, might still resort to an arbitrary “tallage,” the right to extort which had not been taken away by Magna Carta. The money was as good to the Crown under one name as under another.[[666]]
[662]. Cf. Miss Norgate (John Lackland, p. 214) who explains that the Crown claimed a share of the sheriffs’ ever-increasing surplus, and "this was done, not by putting the ferm at a higher figure, but by charging the sheriff with an additional lump sum under the title of crementum, or, in John’s time, proficuum.“ But this practice was by no means an innovation invented by John. Henry II. often exacted such extra payments under the name of ”gersuma." Thus in Pipe Roll Henry II. (p. 11) the Sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk paid 200 marks under that name. The method adopted was practically to set up the office of sheriff to auction. The highest suitable bidder obtained the post, and the amount of the successful bid was entered at the exchequer as a gersuma.
[663]. Cf. Sir James Ramsay, Angevin Empire, 476, who describes this provision as “an impossible requirement.” Dr. Stubbs’ paraphrase is not entirely happy: “the ferms of the counties and other jurisdictions are not to be increased.” See Const. Hist. I. 575.
[664]. These are the words of the Statute of 1330, cited below.
[665]. See 4 Edward III. c. 15; 14 Edward III. c. 9; and 4 Henry IV. c. 5.